Democratic Participation Through Civic Tech

Civic Tech was one of the four funding priorities of the Prototype Fund until 2024. Civic Tech is software that enables democratic participation, for example by facilitating access to information, supporting the exchange of information between citizens or enabling their participation in political and administrative processes.

Erkenntnisse aus der Trendforschung

At the start of the Prototype Fund in 2016, Dr Gesa Lüdecke and Tim Mayer from the betterplace lab looked at which topics were being addressed in the field of civic tech and in which areas solutions were lacking. They identified the following needs:

  • Government funding programmes are needed for the non-profit financing of projects on political participation (open government), the promotion of democracy, education (open educational resources), health, transport and mobility. Without such funding, many tasks cannot be adequately supported by voluntary work.
  • In many cases, data sets are a prerequisite for the development of civic data applications but these are often not freely available or not structured. Comprehensive open data from the state institutions, e.g. on urban development, transport or budgetary issues, enables democratic participation through software.
  • Existing solutions are often not easy enough to find and stakeholders are not sufficiently networked. Resources need to be pooled, which can be achieved by cataloguing solutions and local innovation hubs, for example. This can also ensure that solutions are aligned with the needs of their target groups and developed in a coordinated manner.

You can find the full report (in German) here.

Civic Tech Projects

Improving the transparency of and opportunities for participation in democratic decision-making processes

Making open and structured data from state institutions available

Facilitating information and communication between the state and citizens

Supporting exchange between citizens, e.g. in the city, community or neighbourhood

Blog posts on the topic of software development for democratic participation

Weitere Ressourcen

Code for Germany

The network of volunteers in regional groups is committed to digitisation for the common good in cities, municipalities and regions.

Open link

Project Together

The non-profit organisation supports civil society projects that support social transformation processes such as integration or the energy transition, acting as an intermediary between the state and business.

Open link